Should You Let Microsoft Just “Fix It”?

Microsoft has been slowly and quietly adding something to its help pages as of late.

Sure, Staples has the “Easy” button – but Microsoft has the “Fix It” button.

If you’ve got a problem, and there is a solution published in Microsoft’s “help” documentation, they figure they might as well just DO the actual work for you too.  Just push the “Fix It” button.

“If we know what those 15 steps are why shouldn’t we just script it,” said Lori Brownell, Microsoft’s general manager of product quality and online support.

The “Fix it” option is still fairly rare, showing up in around 100 different help documents. The effort is growing rapidly, though, up from just four such fixes when the program quietly began in December.

Of course, you will still have the option of doing all the work yourself, if you like.

This, however, takes things to another level.  Microsoft can now basically fix your computer for you.

Is this a good thing, though?  I’m just not sure that I want Microsoft digging around on my PC.

The first fixes included a number of common issues, including restoring a missing Internet Explorer icon to the desktop, how to enable the DVD library in Vista‘s Windows Media Center as well as what to do when encountering the error message in Street & Trips 2008 that “Construction information for routes could not be downloaded”.